Inward Journey: Personal Psychological Stories & Perspectives into Arab/Human Behavior

By Dr. Talib Kafaji

Inward Journey, a book exploring the different facets of human psychology in the form of stories, is a cocktail of thoughts from the psychology of the Middle East, and how much the desert shaped the individual to prostitute in Hong Kong and about her perilous journey in the China sea. From the ingredients of happiness to the metaphysical causes of illness. The chapters of the book are not connected, you may read any chapter independently. There are many mystical cases and some clinical cases presented to benefit the readers and to shed some light into the invisible world of our existence. The book also explores the dark side of our soul as well as the struggle of all of us to find some meaning and joy to our life. Nevertheless it is a serious writing, but at the same time is very delightful reading.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 20, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452083506

Dr. Talib Kafaji

Dr. Talib Kafaji , an immigrant from the Middle East, completed his higher education at the University of Northern Colorado , where he obtained a doctorate degree in psychology. He has worked in several countries in the Middle East , as well as being a licensed practicing psychologist in the State of Michigan and adjunct professor at Wayne State University and Detroit University . Through his research , he has interviewed thousands of people to develop a clear perspective of human nature . Dr.Kafaji’s other books are Inward Journey , The Psychology of The Arab, The Triumph Over the Mediocre Self, Contemplative Thoughts in Human Nature: Observations on Human Destructive Tendencies, The Sly Mind: The Structure of the Mind and Its Refusal to Be Controlled, and the Pitfalls of Being Human: How to Free Ourselves From the Trap of Our Existence.

Book preview

© 2011 Dr. Talib Kafaji. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 3/1/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4520-8349-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4520-8350-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010914218

Printed in the United States of America

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any Web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

1. The Story of My Underwear

2. Personal Strengths

3. Irrational Thinking

4. Is That Part of Human Nature?

5. Higher Self & Lower Self

6. Reincarnation

7. If You Want to be Happy for the Rest of Your Life Just Find Yourself a Moroccan Wife

8. Guilt Feeling

9. Psychology of Adam Story

10. The Triumph of Evil

11. Yearning for the Union

12. Wednesday Evening Discussion

13. The Meaning Of Our Life

14. The Psychology of the Desert Inhabitants

15. The Psychology Of Religions

16. Kindred Spirit

17. Ingredients for Happiness

18. Metaphysical Meaning of Illness

19. Honor Killing

20. Faithfulness

21. Everything Happens for a Reason

22. East is East … West is West, The Twain Shall Never Meet

23. The Cruelty of Family

24. Conversation with a Learned Man

25. Psychological Pollution

26. The Woman from Brazil

27. Psychological Incest

28. Box of Identity

29. The Prostitute of Hong Kong

30. Previous Life

Introduction

I have been working as a psychologist for over 27 years. I have lived and worked in my beloved adopted country of America and I have now been working in the Middle East for last eight years. I have always wanted to share my professional and personal experiences with others. I thought, It is time for me to get started and write the book that I have always dreamed of writing.

I had always suggested to my graduate students and supervisees when I taught them counseling and psychotherapy skills that the best model for treatment they could use with their patients was to bring their total being and their genuine self into the therapeutic process. Therefore, the advice that I gave my people I have to apply it in writing my book. I have to be wide open to the readers, with no pretence. In this book I am sharing the inward journey of myself and the people with whom I crossed paths as well as the ones who received professional help from me. Undoubtedly, the names of the patients have been changed for the sake of confidentiality. There are four sections in the book. It is comprised of 30 separate journeys, each one distinctively unique, perhaps in some of them the tone of sexuality is more pronounced. All the stories that I have cited in the book are real.

First: The personal inward journey through which I have gone was a series of metamorphoses and reassessments of my whole personality, from being an atheist wandering around the world and searching for the meaning of life in nearly 100 countries, to becoming a man with a profound faith and spirituality, from being a person who had a restless soul, to becoming a person who is anchored in the love of God, and from being an individual who suffered from bouts of depression, to becoming a person who is truly happy. For example, the Moroccan woman story was one of several mystical experiences that have shaped my life. The kindred spirit story is one which I have been unable to figure out and have no words to describe it. In my childhood I witnessed the honor killing, which is still in limited practice in some parts of the Middle East. Perhaps we need to accept certain events in life just as they are.

Second: The professional cases of treatment that I have presented here are those that I felt needed to be shared with readers as they can be of value to them. For example, the reincarnation case was mind-boggling to me and the Nadir and Aida story was a heart-wrenching one.

Third: My clinical observations about the Middle Eastern culture may appear to be critical at times. But, since I am a psychologist who has worked in both cultures and I was born in the Middle East, my observations are personal and seen through the eyes of an analytical psychologist. I feel compelled to share my perspectives. We in the Middle East must identify our shortcomings. We must not be like an ostrich who buries his head in the sand. While the Arab contributed greatly to the human community in terms of science and knowledge during the time of the Islamic renaissance, the present-day Arab, unfortunately, lags behind in contributions to the human community, except in a very limited area. Thus, the Arab must experience a self-awakening that addresses the following essential needs of the majority of the population: illiteracy, poverty, oppression, lack of justice, lack of freedom of expression, absence of creativity, and, most of all, regulate the unbridled greed or selfishness in their lives.

Fourth: The people with whom I met in my travels made contributions to my inward journey. For example, the Cuban doctor, the guru in India, and the friends in Abu Dhabi, as well as the women I dated or married had certain mystical qualities about them and of course some craziness as well.

This book is a collection of different thoughts, ideas, wisdom, experiences, encounters, and spirituality.

I intended to title the book, Cocktail Thinking, as it is a cocktail of thoughts. Over all, it is a humble gift to the readers to enjoy.

Talib kafaji

October 2009

Abu Dhabi

The Story of My Underwear

On one winter morning in 1996, I entered a copy place well-known in Detroit, Michigan, called King’s. I saw a regal, beautiful black woman who was radiating with sex and charm, and her legs were far better than Jennifer Lopez’s legs. I went to her and said, Good morning. She flashed her bright teeth and answered me back with such a pleasing manner. I collected my courage and asked for her- phone number. After that, we became close friends, and we dated for over two years.

In the second year she got pregnant from me, and we went to the abortion clinic to have an abortion. It was very hard on her, but not hard on me because of my fears of responsibility and insecurity about life. Then one day she came and asked me to marry her. Of course, as an insecure man and fearful of being committed to one person, I said, No.

Pamela is a wonderful, highly educated woman. She is a worldly woman and very cultured, and most of all, she loves Tee, as she used to call me.

She left me and got married to a lawyer who turned out to be a dishonest person, and he cheated on her several times and did not respect her. The marriage lasted five years and, within those five years, she did not contact me, and I respected her marriage and hoped that she would find a life with this man.

Then the time came when I moved to work in Abu Dhabi in 2002. I found the love of my life with a Moroccan woman in Abu Dhabi, and l got married to Safa in 2004. She was a woman with such a rich soul. She brought me back to a deep faith and love in God, which I had lost throughout the years that I spent wandering around the world. Although, the time that I was with Safa was a time of excruciating pain and agony, it resulted in a new spiritual birth of myself. Sadly enough, the marriage did not last long enough to work out our differences, and we got divorced in January, 2005. Still, the pain of losing a great partner was beyond any description, and I mourned the loss for a period of time, even though the old wisdom tells us that people come to our life either for a reason, or for a season, or for a lifetime. It seemed Safa came to my life for a reason, the spiritual revival of my soul.

Then, one day Pamela contacted my friend in Detroit and got my number in Abu Dhabi. She called me up and said that she had gotten divorced, and she would like to come to see me and explore the possibility of us being together again. Of course, I welcomed the idea, as I was very lonely after the divorce. She came in the winter of 2005, and we had great times with such fabulous spiritual sexual experiences, because every part of her body radiates with sexuality. I could not have enough of kissing every inch of her marvelous body.

One day I was changing my underwear before her, and she saw a mark around my waistline, and she asked, Why do you have such a noticeable mark around your waistline?

The answer was obvious—that was a result of wearing tight underwear for many years. She said, Why in the world don’t you wear wider underwear?

I said to her, surprised, Would they have a wider one?

She said, Of course!

I said, I really did not know, or I knew, but throughout the years I got used to the discomfort of wearing tight underwear and never paid attention to the mark around my waistline.

Pamela took me to the mall in Abu Dhabi and she purchased for me 6 pairs of wide comfortable underwear and said to me, Wear them now, and you can feel the difference.

When I started to wear them, I felt so good and had no more discomfort of wearing tight underwear.

•••

The merit of this story shows the ultimate in human stupidity. We, as a people, are inclined to get used to the pain or discomfort in our lives if we do it long enough, and we do not think to change it. I have tolerated all those years wearing tight underwear without even thinking to change it.

That is exactly what is happening to us as human beings. We live under such pain and misery, but we do not like to change. Either we are unaware of the possibility of such change, or we think this is all we have in life. The feeling of being worthless often time tends to be buried in our unconscious mind. Thus, we periodically need to have a serious examination of our life, and see if we are experiencing anything that may bother us or cause some pain to us. Then we can try to change it or move away from it.

However, the sad fact of life is that deep down in the recess of our unconscious mind we believe that we do not deserve to be happy. Therefore, we stay or tolerate physical or psychological pain. Try not to go far and just look around and see how many people are in serious physical pain, and do not take any steps to correct it or try to heal themselves. If you ask them, Do you want to be happy and healthy? the answer is, Of course, I want to be happy and healthy, but they do not want to do the hard work. As the old wisdom states, Everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die. How in the world can you get to be in heaven unless you die first? If you want to be happy and healthy, then there is a part of you that must die so you can allow the healthy part to flourish.

There are few people in the world who understand that life is a journey of joy, on the contrary, others think life is a journey of pain and discomfort. We can see that clearly all over people’s faces and attitudes. The best example is me who lived all those years with tight underwear and did not understand that there was some comfortable underwear on the market.

Maybe, we are oblivious to the things around us or to the pain that we have. It takes a person to be a psychologically minded individual to understand the complexity of their being. The biggest challenge to us as a human being is to know the good and the bad for us. We may think that we know, but reality shows us the opposite. However, if we do not treat ourselves well, then we cannot treat others well. The fundamental concern here is to identify the pain or the discomfort in one’s life so we can change. We also need to learn the skills to change and to become healthy and happy human beings. Consequentially, the world around us will be a happy and healthy place. And as the old wisdom goes, If I am happy, the world is happy, and if I am miserable, then I will make the world around me miserable as well. These attitudes or thoughts are contagious and thus, we really need to be very mindful about them.

This concept may lead us to a bigger concept which is the love for ourselves. If we have it, then we have it for others, but if we do not have it, then our heart is empty, and that can be a catastrophe.

There is a metaphoric story in which a group of angels were asked by some humans, Tell us, what heaven is? Their answer was, We cannot describe heaven, but we can say the closest thing to heaven is the heart with love. Then, they were asked, Tell us, what hell is? Their answer was the heart that has no love.

Human beings are born with a tendency to be unhappy because of the mishaps that happened to our ancestors throughout the years on the earth. They suffered a lot in their lives and that stays in our collective conscious. We need to do the serious work in life to undo the damages that have been inflicted on us, whether from our parents, or from our unconscious, or from the people around us. To be happy and free from any psychological or physical pain is our ultimate task. Again, by nature, we are lazy creatures, we do not like to work hard, but we just like to take it easy. Thus, we need to challenge our nature and try to work to be healthy and happy.

Throughout my limited years on the planet Earth and in working as a psychologist for many years in different cultures, I have observed that people, in general, do not know how to be happy. As our beloved father, Sigmund Freud, said There is pleasure in pain and misery.

Being happy or healthy physically or psychologically requires a lot of work and skills. We need to draw a lesson from all these concepts and hold it dear to our heart. We need to learn it or be around people who point it out to us, and that is what my beloved friend Pamela did on her last trip to Abu Dhabi. If she had not pointed it out to me, I would be still wearing tight underwear and suffering silently.

So, please do not suffer silently, try to find your own Pamela to show you how to free yourself from the tight underwear. I am certain that most of us wear metaphoric tight underwear. We are living a mediocre life without examination or enjoyment.

Plato said, An unexamined life is not worth living. Now you are faced with the challenge that there is immensity in living joyfully. Do not accept the mediocrity in your life-style. Be unique and compassionate in your life.

Personal Strengths

We all as, individuals, aspire to be strong in many areas in our life because we are born with certain limitations, and we may spend our life trying to overcome these limitations. There is no human being who is free from such limitations or shortcomings, either physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually. Some of us are aware of these limitations, while the rest of us are not. Of course, the ones who are unaware of such limitations are the fortunate ones, while the ones who are aware of them may suffer and may spend a good portion of their time making up for the undeveloped part of them. There is an old Chinese saying that says, He who seeks knowledge seeks sorrow. In other words, ignorance is a blessing because if one does not know, then there is no need to try, but if one knows, the trouble may start. It depends upon the way you look at it.

We must know that when we are born, we are a half-developed being, and we need to strive to complete the unfinished business of our personal development. Thus, we have to have an awareness of the unfinished pieces in order to make the change in these areas. Perhaps we will go through life with a serious developmental problem and will not mind it at all. Hence, we will talk about the individual who wants to change in order to make their life more meaningful and enjoyable. The change can also make you more effective and invigorated and can enrich your personality for as long as you live. Perhaps people will say, Why should I change? The answer is clear. If you live comfortably with your self inside of your skin, then there is no need for a change. As they say, Do not scratch where it does not itch. But, if you feel that there is some itching in one or two areas of your life, then you may benefit from the steps outlined below.

There are four areas in which you can build your personal strength: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. The road maps for improving each of them are as follows:

Physically

Undoubtedly, physical health is the springboard for a joyful life. Moreover, being physically healthy is a full-time job because the abundance of health does not come easily and you have to do something every day that makes your health better. The most important challenge that we face is our laziness because we, as individuals, are born with the inclination to be lazy. However, there are a few necessary steps that any individual can follow to obtain good health and vitality. Furthermore, you must assign a time to each step and never postpone what you may need to do to get the health that you desire. As they say in the old Native American wisdom, Try to carry your body in the first 40 years correctly and then your body will carry you for the next 40 years of your life.

Strict adherence to the following principles will allow you to have abundance of health.

1. Every morning drink four glasses of water on an empty stomach which will clear up all the blockages in the body activate the digestive system and remove the sediments.

2. After drinking the water in the morning, eat fruits.

3. Try to restrict yourself to a single food family which means try to eat each food family separately and do not mix fruits with proteins, or carbohydrates with proteins. Just eat